View original postchuck todd -- director of news on NBC's various satellite stations -- was recently quoted as saying it's not the news media's job to report why Obamacare is not "the destruction of everything" or the other misinformation that's been floating around as of late. yeah, jon stewart is concerned about his ratings, but he's not a legitimate news show, even if he accidentally covers a story which does not make it into the mainstream press.
To some extent I'm inclined to agree (though it may not be precisely what he meant) that a topic like Obamacare is too complex to make the TV news a good medium for analyzing it in depth. Maybe people just need to realize that if they want to have an opinion on a topic like that which is worth a damn, they'll have to put some actual effort into reading up on it - and that if they can't be bothered to do that, it would behoove them to shut their pieholes.
Of course, if what he meant was that his channel should not even strive to give an accurate picture of Obamacare, then yeah, you have grounds for being offended.
Anyway, what you note about Jon Stewart is pretty much the problem - that many people seem to think that just because most TV media sucks, they might as well take Jon Stewart as main source because at least he's funny, and he tells them what they want to hear. While on the whole NBC and certainly CNN may be still a better and more representative source of news.
View original postchuck todd, however,
does have a vested interest in making sure news gets reported fairly and honestly. in fact, it's supposed to be his job to report on "the news". so when jon stewart makes a point about how fucked up things have gotten, he's doing so because it will make for some good jokes while sticking to the truth of the matter. if NBC can't even be bothered to do actual journalism anymore, it falls to the jon stewarts of the world to step up and fill the void.
Jon Stewart is on Comedy Channel (or was last time I checked). As is Stephen Colbert. That should tell you something. The answer to shitty TV journalism is not turning to comedians for your news.
View original postpersonally, i'd prefer us to go back to the days when someone would be completely disgraced for saying that providing millions of people access to health care is the same as the rise of the nazi party, or that access to health care is "the destruction of America", but right now that's a pipe dream. i'd also like to see a law in the US similar to what i've read about Canada, where it's illegal to lie on a news program. the problem with fox "news" is that they spend 3/4 of their programming on punditry while claiming it as a news network. punditry definitely has its place, but unfortunately too many people do not distinguish between legitimate news and opinion pieces.
Yeah, it's true that this "gerrymandering" of media spheres as Greg's NYT article called it is allowing people to get away unharmed (at least unharmed on their own side, which increasingly is all that they need to care about) with astonishingly stupid things. But the punditry problem is definitely present on MSNBC and other liberal channels just as it is on Fox News.